


The Fall of the House of Holmes

by okapi



Series: Spooky & Kooky (the Halloween fics) [12]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Dark, Death, Grief/Mourning, Halloween, Horror, Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, M/M, the dog does not die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-23 04:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16151516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" with Holmes as Roderick Usher, Watson as Madeline Usher, Victor Trevor as the narrator, and Rasher III as himself (a bull terrier pup of proud ankle-freezing lineage).ACD. Horror. For Hallowe'en 2018. Heed the tags!





	1. Chapter 1

With every funereal drumbeat of hoof upon deaden ground, my dapple mount drew me further into a land of shadowy daylight and indefinable melancholy.

During the whole of the journey from the station, I accused myself of madness, for who alone but a madman would have traded the vibrant terraces of Terai for this dismal tract of English countryside?

I fussed with the collar of my coat. A chill threatened.

My home—a place of spice and fragrance, of the swish of sari silks and the jingle of anklet charms, and, most of all, of curtains, canopies, and carpets of dark green leaves—was an ocean voyage away. I ached for my Eden, scored as it was in wide, flat steps that sandal-shod giants might reach its azure heavens.

The memory of that rich, resonant, redolent garden-world stood in sharp contrast to the realm through which I traveled. All around me was a terrain as unwelcoming as it was barren, nude of frond and silent of birdsong, with the only perfume a foul peaty cord that tied my gut in sailor’s knots.

It was the autumn of the year. It was the autumn of my life.

And here I was, a madman.

I was mad because I had abandoned my comfortable home—after twenty-five years of estrangement the land of my birth had, at last, relinquished the title—and travelled to England at the behest of a man whom I’d never met.

Never met, but nevertheless, could not refuse.

_Dear Mister Trevor,_

_I am writing to grievously trespass upon any feeling you may still safeguard for your old friend Sherlock Holmes and plead that you join us for a visit. Holmes is not well, and, quite frankly, neither am I. He and I retired from professional life when his brother died, and this spring, we moved from London to his ancestral manor, as the villagers call it, the House of Holmes. Since our arrival, I’ve noted an alarming decline in Holmes’s health as well as my own, the details of which I shall spare you, but as he stubbornly refuses to quit the place and I just as stubbornly refuse to quit him, we are pledged to remain. I do, rescinding dignity, implore you to come as soon as you may and stay with us for a long as your circumstance permit. Holmes would be overjoyed, and your company would do no end of good at relieving my anxiety over his wellbeing. I believe, and please accept my apologies if I err in this belief, that apart from his late brother, you and I are the two in all the world who have known him best and cared for him most…._

I cursed the pitiful beseeching of a once-proud man, and I cursed the softness of character which had bent my will to his. If I’d been harder, colder, meaner with my affection, I would’ve thrown the missive into the fire, never, ever to have found myself willingly traversing this desolate parcel, a cursed land which gave every appearance of never having known a spring.

I crested a ridge, and there it was.

There it must have been, for it could be no other.

The House of Holmes.

In the centre of a veritable wasteland, it stood, an assembly of phallic stone jutting out of a sparse forest of gnarled elements.

The scene was a study in charcoal, lighter smudges for stone, darker for clouds, and darker still for the twisted trunks and limbs that reached upwards. The last were curious. They spread like supplicating appendages of recumbent forms which might have been conveniently hidden by a graveyard miasma which crawled out of a black tarn.

A sense of foreboding settled heavy on my breast. I shuddered and murmured,

“What have you let yourself in for, m’boy?”

A high-pitched whine issued from behind my left shoulder, answering the spirit, if not the letter of my query. At my back, I felt a solid wriggling followed by a sharp pawing; then a spongy black nose emerged from a soft leather satchel. The nose was followed by a white-pink snout and two triangle-shaped ears thrown back flat against an egg-shaped head.

“Almost there, Rasher,” I said, giving him a robust scratch behind the ears. My visions of vast open meadows replete with fauna for my furry friend to chase and flora for him to sniff were suddenly dashed, and my heart clenched with painful guilt. How could I have brought my most beloved of companions to so inhospitable a corner of the globe?

“We’ll be fine,” I said.

Rasher whimpered, then licked covetously at my earlobe.

The beast at my back retreated into his makeshift womb as I urged the beast between my legs on.

We skirted the tarn.

My hope that a different view of the edifice might dispel its gloomy imprint was a vain one. As I neared my destination, neither the ghastliness of the House of Holmes nor my unease dissipated.

For a moment, my courage waivered.

I contemplated turning and fleeing, for what could the burden of a broken promise compare to the fate that might await me in such a place?

But, no, I was no coward.

I was a man of my word, and Sherlock Holmes was my friend.

The reading public had learned of our friendship from Doctor Watson’s published account of the circumstances surrounding my father’s death. When the story reached India, I was pleased to see the facts laid out plainly enough, but I also secretly commended Doctor Watson for permitting in his chronicle subtle hints of the intimacy between Holmes and myself and the way in which that intimacy had been permanently rent asunder by events which, for Holmes, were an inaugural professional victory, but, for me, a profound tragedy and source of lifelong sorrow.

I wondered what my father would think if he could see me now. I doubted if he would find the odor tickling my nostrils any more agreeable than I did. I realised the pungency emanated from the tarn itself which seemed to thicken and exist, not flow for I could perceive no movement in it at all, as a kind of moat that encircled the house.

For all its inertia, the black sludge seemed to be on a campaign of spreading out and spreading in. It spilt over the perimetre of its embankment and, if my eyes did not deceive me, was also eating away at the foundation of the house. I made a note to ask Holmes about the construction of the place, giving as it did the suggestion of engineering improbability.

At last, I reached a short causeway which led down a steep grade to the entrance to the House of Holmes.

I was a bit surprised at the old dear who met me. She had passed, I estimated, a decade shy of a century on this earth. Her visage was heavily creviced with scars and age. A nest of grizzled steel was perched atop her head. Her form was bent, with her upper portion almost perpendicular to the earth. She did not smile, or if she did, she did not permit me to note it, but rather took my horse and, with a few curt words, bid me wait. After a time, she reappeared, somewhat worse for the horse-wrangling, I might add, and conducted me inside. I was thankful that I had arranged, per Doctor Watson’s instructions, to have my trunks delivered by dogcart, for this elderly woman did, in fact, reach for the luggage I’d brought with me, which was of itself no inconsequential weight. I told her not to trouble, that I would see to the bags myself, and she made no objection, though her wizen face did show a moment’s alarm when Rasher made his presence known. I put my companion on a lead and for once in his short life, he did not try to wrench the strap from my hand with the ferocious _on y va_ that was his familial _esprit de corps_.

Rasher was, in fact, a model of canine obedience as we followed our guide through a Gothic archway and down dark and intricate passages. As we advanced I asked myself where in God’s name were the manservants or any other servants, for that matter, for we passed no one and heard nothing but our own journeying. Surely, I thought, Holmes could not run a house of this size on one lone back stooped from almost a hundred-year’s toil!

I did, at last, meet one person, his Gladstone bag betrayed him as a medical man, but he only grunted what might have been greeting and farewell and made haste in the direction from whence I’d come.

Then, a door was thrown open, and I was ushered into a room.

I had the fleeting thought that by the end of my sojourn, I would either have the eyesight of an owl or succumb to Homeric blindness. It seemed that ever since I’d left the station, my rods and cones been adjusting to the lack of colour and dimness without, and I noted along the corridors and passageways a similar chromatic scheme, or lack thereof, within.

But nothing could have prepared me for where I found myself.

That the room was very large and very lofty I felt rather than perceived, for my eyes registered nothing, absolutely nothing, but uniform darkness.

I heard a slow rheumatic shuffling. Then light from a trio of oil lamps bathed the interior in a warm glow, but unlike the room’s size, the warmth I saw, rather than felt. It was cold, frightfully cold. Rasher whined and huddled close, rubbing his oblong head against my calf.

The room was a library, or at least it held as many books as a library, though more volumes were piled on furniture and strewn about the floor than stood on the shelves.

I knew from my memories of our school days that Holmes had tendency to untidiness, and Doctor Watson’s stories had confirmed that the tendency had lingered into my friend’s adult life.

But the disorder about me went beyond untidiness. It was chaos, a violent eruption of a macabre Hans Sloane collection. Books piled high. Cascades of papers. Pens and fugitive trickles of ink. Half-gutted candles and wax drippings. Bottles and jars. Chemical apparatus. Instruments of natural—and, perhaps, unnatural—philosophy. Tiny statues. Mammoth statues. Monuments to questionable practices in taxidermy. One lone violin, as far as I could see, but its detritus, pots of resin, broken strings, sheets and sheets of musical score, and some of scrawled with handwritten cuneiform, were to be discovered in every nook and cranny.

And of nooks and crannies, there were legion.

But through it all, there was a circular path which the old woman followed back to me when she’d completed her lamp-lighting circuit.

“Oh, you’re here,” said a voice, low and thick as if it had been roused from dreamful slumber. “Before the necessary cordialities, let me stoke the fire.”

I watched a thin silhouette crouch before a heap of dying embers.

“Nothing else, Mrs. Hudson. Thank you.”

The breath was wasted: the old woman had long since departed.

The fire grew almost at once into a quite serviceable blaze. A blessed warmth began to make much-welcome inroads in the atmosphere.

The figure stood and turned but remained more absence of light than definitive form.

“Trevor.”

“Holmes.”

“So good of you to come.”

And that was all Rasher required to charge.

“Oh, ho, ho.”

To my relief, the noise was a wheeze of amusement, lacking any sign of irritation or, worse, fear.

“You must forgive him, Holmes,” I said. “He’s heard tales of that ankle at his grand-sire’s paw, and nothing less than a heathen’s adoration will do.”

“Just so, just so. He is Rasher in spirit, is he not?”

“And he is Rasher in name, too, for I am a man of habit.”

“Aren’t we all?”

We stood in silence and stillness for a few minutes as I allowed Rasher his canine liberties. He sniffed and licked and jumped and butt his ramrod head against one of Holmes’s trouser leg and then the other.

Then I called my four-legged friend to heel, and astonishingly, he obliged, seeming quite content to continue his explorations and investigations at my side. Perhaps he’d come to realise that the room’s proprietor was only one of its many curiosities.

At last, my host stepped forward.

The voice that had spoken had been older, yes, coarser, yes, heavier, as with the weight of time or illness or sorrow, yes, but it had still been recgonisable as belonging to my old friend.

The man in the lamplight, however, was a stranger to me.

Lean had become cadaverous. Pale had become sickly wan. A dark cap of hair was now a ferocious uncombed, untrimmed mane of death-shock white. The nose and chin and cheekbones, always thin and sharp, were now grotesque prominences that threatened to pierce through the translucent skin, while the eyes and the mouth had sunk to tiny wells. Indeed, it pained me most that I could not see the heather grey irises of memory and, I confess, reverie.

“I am not the man I once was,” said Holmes, answering my expression.

“None of us are, and you forget, my dear Holmes, I only knew the boy,” I replied.

He inclined his head in acknowledgement, then bid me sit with the wave of a skeletal hand.

There were only two armchairs before the fire. I hesitated, then said with a slight nervousness,

“Won’t Doctor Watson be joining us?”

“No, he is confined to sickbed these days,” said Holmes with an expression so mournful I wondered, momentarily, if the statement were falsehood and that Watson was already dead. “And I am interred here.” He raised his arms and extended his fingers like the unfolding of a pair of bone-veined fans.

I sat, and Rasher immediately made himself at home in my lap, the better, I noted, to research from a position of relative safety a mummified baby crocodile that was poking its proboscis out of a curled cataract of maps of ancient Egypt.

“I am the very last of the Holmes, did you know?”

Holmes spoke quite conversationally. Indeed, I thought he might have been smiling as he spoke, but this was pure conjecture on my part, for I could not see the shape of his mouth to confirm or refute the notion. I wondered, briefly, if whatever afflicted him had robbed him of his teeth.

“When Mycroft died, there was no one, not even a greedy unknown Australian cousin, as the romances have made so popular, to take over this wretched place. Thus, I resigned myself to the responsibility, and, of course, Watson would not hear of me retiring alone. Loyal to the grave, my dear Watson, loyal, to, the, grave.”

“Mrs. Hudson, too?” I asked, for I recognised the name from Doctor Watson’s stories.

“Oh, no, that’s not our landlady from Baker Street. That’s a woman from the village. She’s no family, if I recall correctly. Watson found her and arranged the business where we first arrived. Not certain what her name is. I just call her ‘Mrs. Hudson.’ She does for us.” He made a vague gesture.

I was more alarmed by this than any of the alterations in my old friend’s appearance, for at school, I’d always known Holmes to give much more consideration to servants and the lower classes than any of our peers.

Anxious, I considered that the best stratagem of the moment was bold frankness.

“Holmes, pray tell me, what is it exactly that ails you?”

He sighed wearily. “My senses, my dear Trevor, are failing. That is, the sensations that my body registers are so violent and so overwhelming that they form a prison of sorts, barring me from all the activities I used to so enjoy. I can hardly eat or drink. My palate rejects all but the blandest of nourishment in the meagerest portion…”

I frowned, recalling the gift box of saffron and curry spices tucked away in one of my trunks.

“…my eyes shun light…my ears are pained by much noise and all music, save a few notes of my own production…scents I once considered pleasant, even roses, dear me, even the hope-filled roses, provoke abject disgust…”

His despair was catching. My heart sank.

“But what do the doctors say, Holmes?”

“Oh, doctors,” he said with a snarl. Though not a positive display, I rejoiced for it was the first bit of spirit I’d seen from him. “I’ve had cadres of doctors traipsing in and out! They are buffoons. They recommend that I abandon this place, and that is the one thing that I cannot do.”

“But why not?”

“This is the House of Holmes,” he said stubbornly. “And I am _the_ Holmes.”

I never thought I would ever hear such blind foolishness from so logical a mind.

“But what about Doctor Watson?” I protested. “Will you not think of him?”

“Watson is…”

Holmes turned his head and did not speak for a long moment. A clock ticked somewhere.

I leaned forward and rested my hands on my thighs, waiting for Holmes’s reply, and, perhaps sensing the gravitas of the moment, even ever-ebullient Rasher halted his researches.

“…fading.”

The word was anticlimactic, and perhaps Holmes thought so, too, for he made an odd smacking sound that might have been a noise of dissatisfaction. When he spoke again, his voice resembled one of those curious trees that surrounded the manor, futilely reaching for what was beyond reach.

“Fading like light. Fading like music and scent and flavour. Retreating, but, also, plunging, sinking, descending to a depth,” his arm rose, then fell in a dramatic swoop, “ _where I cannot follow_.”

Holmes leaned forward in his chair, and his eyes bulged from their cavernous recesses.

And there were the heather grey irises of long ago, though they were now thin rings set in eyes wet with unshed tears.

What a bittersweet moment.

I smiled, then shook my head ruefully.

“I am so very sorry, Holmes.”

He sniffed. “I owe you a thousand-fold debt of gratitude, my dear man. You cannot know how your presence buoys me.”

Never to allow even the semblance of a slight, Rasher woofed.

And it was then that the narrow face of my friend widened in what I am absolutely certain was a smile.

“And, you, too, Master Rasher. And you, too.”

* * *

Holmes showed me to my room, where my trunks awaited me. It was a comfortable situation, and I saw to my toilet, and Rasher’s, for my room looked onto what might have been at a small garden but had sank into a state unworthy of so animated a nomenclature. It served its purpose, but I was grateful that Rasher did not seem keen to venture beyond a limit of thorny brambles.

Rasher and I then joined Holmes for dinner. It was an unusual arrangement, I’ll admit, allowing a beast invitation to dine alongside his master, but so far as I could see, nothing about the House of Holmes was conventional, and I was in no mood to abandon my curious pup in such a place.

Satisfaction just might not bring him back.

At dinner, Holmes partook of only a few spoonfuls of consommé, but, thankfully, I was presented with heartier fare. I enjoyed the meal, thought it was devoid of all the heat and fragrance to which my palate was accustomed. Rasher, too, seemed satisfied with his bowl, and we ate rapidly and without conversation, Rasher out of constitutional predisposition and me out of a desire to free Holmes as quickly as possible from the table. I sensed that he was disturbed but was trying valiantly not to show any signs of that disturbance.

Soon, the three of us were back by the fire. The old dear had conjured up a dinosaur-sized bone for Rasher’s benefit, and he sank to the floor beside my feet, intent on devouring his trove.

A collection of bottles and an old gasogene were set on a small table. “Please help yourself,” said Holmes with a nod.

I approached but then hesitated, noting the whole ensemble was covered in a thick layer of dust and not a few cobwebs.

“Mrs. Hudson! Glass!” bellowed Holmes.

I cringed at the thought of putting the old dear to trouble at that late an hour and thanked her profusely for the glass when it arrived. As it was only a single vessel, I raised in inquiring eyebrow in Holmes’s direction.

“I only drank spirits for Watson’s sake,” he answered, then added a grimace. “And wine has gone the way of roses…”

I poured myself two fingers of whiskey, neat—not trusting the rusty gasogene or its contents—and settled back into the assigned armchair of earlier.

“Holmes, I confess that I don’t understand this state you’re in. It seems lethargy to the point of folly to remain here and just waste away. You have means. Go to London, get Watson and yourself some specialised care, go abroad, to the Continent, to Italy or the south of France, any climate would be more palliative than this one. Or if not so far, to the English seaside, fresh air, sunshine, colour…”

“You call it folly, my dear Trevor and so it is. Deplorable folly in which I am convinced I will perish.”

“Fight, Holmes! Why surrender when you can fight?”

He turned his head to me, and there were no flashes of heather grey visible in the recesses of his eye sockets.

“I am afraid, Trevor,” he whispered.

“Of what?” I cried.

“Just afraid,” he said weakly. “Watson…”

“I should like to see him, Holmes.”

“No!” He glanced at me, then tempered his voice. “Not tonight, at least.”

“Very well.”

“His wasting wears on me, Trevor. He has been my cherished companion for so very long and I hold him so dear that the thought of a life without him, well, it doesn’t bear thinking of, and, yet, it is all that I think of.”

My hand dropped, and I felt Rasher’s wet tongue on my fingertips.

“But enough of this,” said Holmes. “Tell me of Terai, of tea, and your life.”

I seized at the opportunity for a more uplifting topic of conversation. On the voyage to England, I had gone so far as to search my memory vaults and construct a long list of amusing anecdotes and interesting happenings to recount to my hosts. But I decided I started with what was, apart from my canine companion, the dearest item to my heart.

Tea, of course.

I launched into a description of the estate, how I’d found it when I first arrived and all the improvements I’d wrought since then. Holmes posed a few questions at first, but then closed his eyes and, with his fingers steepled at his chin, seemed to sink even deeper into his chair.

“I am boring you, Holmes, or keeping from your bed.”

“Nonsense,” he waved a dismissive hand, “I am listening with keen interest. Pray, continue.”

Like anyone with a singular passion, it is my nature to become quite animated when talking of my life’s work. I rose, glass in hand, and began to hold forth as if I were a university lecturer on the subject.

I was unashamed, for Holmes appeared to be quite at peace in his chair, his expression and posture reminding me Doctor Watson’s description of him enjoying a musical performance or listening to a client’s exposition.

My voice trailed, however, when I caught sight of a figure passing slowly through a remote corner of the room.

I had not heard him enter. I did not recognise him, but surely, it was Doctor Watson. His profile, his bearing, his dress, all proclaimed him to be a distinguished gentleman of later years. The bent of his arm suggested he was carrying something small in his hand. I had the rouge supposition it was a pipe.

To this day, I cannot give an account of why I said nothing to Holmes or to the figure itself. I suppose that I was struck with a kind of paralysing fear.

Later, I would associate that moment with Holmes’s confession of earlier.

_“I am afraid, Trevor.”_

_“Of what?”_

_“Just afraid.”_

I, too, was just afraid.

Nevertheless, I strained my feeble eyes, endeavouring to distinguish more clearly the shape in the gloom. The figure made no sign or sound, it did not acknowledge my presence or that of Holmes, but rather retreated slowly, carefully behind what might have been a dark, heavy curtain.

Rasher, my fearless cavalier, whether sensing his master’s distress or a foreign-smelling addition to the party, abandoned his bone and launched into a campaign of barking inquiry.

The noise startled Holmes out of his stupor.

“What, what?! What’s the matter?”

“Rasher, no!” I called, but he did not heed.

“He’s found something interesting,” I said to Holmes. “I suppose you have cats or rats or bats or some equally sporting creature.”

“Not among the living,” said Holmes. “Though I believe there are a few preserved specimens here and there. Perhaps he’s caught scent of one of them.”

Rasher continued to yowl and thrash about the curtain.

“Rasher, stop!” I hurried to him. “Stop! Holmes, I don’t want him to disturb your things.”

Holmes snorted, then spoke in a half-amused tone. “He cannot disturb what is already wholly unsettled.”

When I reached Rasher, I grabbed him by the collar and looked about for Doctor Watson. I observed books, papers, instruments, and curios, the same bric-a-brac as was strewn about the rest of the room, but I did not see Doctor Watson and, what’s more, I could not locate a door.

I frowned.

How had Doctor Watson made his egress from the room? And for that matter, from whence had he come? And even in slippers, how could he have passed and exited so noiselessly? There must be a hidden door. More than one, in fact. I wasn’t difficult to believe that the House of Holmes had its share of secrets and secret passageways.

“Rasher, sit!”

Rasher sat but was still keenly sniffing and snuffling and whimpering, in turn.

I suddenly felt the fatigue of the day compound upon my shoulders.

“Holmes, I think I shall retire for the night,” I said, not hiding my state.

“Yes, of course, you’ve had a long journey. I shall stay here just a while longer and watch the fire die.”

“Very well. Good night, Holmes.”

“Good night, Trevor.”


	2. Chapter 2

So how, you might ask, did we pass our days?

I, for my part, devoted myself to keeping Holmes company and attempting to lift his spirits by whatever means possible.

In the morning and in the afternoon, for example, I made tea.

As it turned out, Holmes could only drink the lightest, most delicate of blends, but I made dark, strong, fortifying cups for myself and the old dear, whose name I learned was, in fact, Mrs. Turner. She and I drank our cups in the kitchen to keep the molesting aroma far from the nose of the master of the house. We developed, I think, a mostly silent rapport that was aiding in large part by Rasher’s antics, which seemed to amuse the old dear immensely.

Holmes and I spent most of our time in the library, much like Dupin and his companion when they found themselves in perfect seclusion in the tottering mansion in the Faubourg St Germain. The curtains were drawn at all hours and were it not for my tea ritual and Rasher’s need for supervised trips to the exterior to tend to his bodily functions, I might have lost track of day and night altogether.

Holmes had his moods, swinging from lethargy to frenzy then back to lethargy in the matter of an hour. He would be seized by an idea, the nature of the idea he rarely confessed to me, and then thoroughly consumed by it in an astonishing short span of time. When seized, he would whirl like a dervish about the room. When spent, he would lounge about in a state of profound exhaustion.

He went into trances. He took naps. He daydreamed. And the difference between these three states was not always apparent.

We read. I wrote letters. Holmes conducted experiments and played the violin. We talked.

Holmes’s library was a curious one. There were the books that one would have expected to find in the collection of a world-famous detective: books on crime and criminals, books on sciences applicable to crime-solving and otherwise, and books on British law. There were also index-books, the private records of Holmes’s cases. But as far as I could tell, all these volumes went untouched.

The books he did consult were on the necromantic arts, mesmerism and thought control, the casting of runes and spells as well as rites and rituals of ancient societies. There were a set of thin volumes whose exteriors bore no legible titles, merely curious scrawl.

I was dealt another blow when the notion dawned that Sherlock Holmes, that great proponent of logic and reason, was throwing himself whole-heartedly into the study of the occult.

“I am regressing,” he admitted. “Once chemistry, now alchemy. Once astronomy, now astrology. Once botany—of poisons, mostly, it’s true—now the reading of tea leaves. These are not philosophical investigations, well, not in the sense they once were. They are closer to hermit’s prayer and sorcerer’s incantation than science, and yet there is a kernel of science to it. And I must carry on, I cannot give up, even though all my efforts so far have been,” his voice cracked, “failures.”

I boggled at this change but reserved judgment.

Holmes did conduct experiments, of a kind, but whenever he opened certain books and turned his attention to instruments and apparatus, much like a chef trying a new recipe, Rasher would become so agitated, attempting to burrow beneath the lowest piece of furniture in the room or squeeze his porcine corpus between my back and the armchair, that I would invariably jump to my feet and announce it was time my pup got a bit of exercise.

And off we’d go, man and beast, strolling through a labyrinth of sad, sulky corridors. I peeked into a few of the rooms, but they were all bare as tombs. And I never found Watson’s sickbed—until it was too late.

I wrote letters. To my knowledge, Holmes wrote none, though he would occasionally have fits of note-taking, frantically copying passages and even illustrations from books to paper. But I never saw him re-visit any of these scribblings. They simply collected in discarded heaps about the room.

In the evenings, Holmes’s moods would lift enough for him to turn to his violin, from which he produced assortments of erratic notes and rhythms that I daresay did not quite meet the definition of music. I identified one pattern of sounds that recurred with some frequency, and when I asked Holmes about it, he said he’d composed the song for Doctor Watson. I admit that I was touched by this and developed, if not an appreciation for it, then at least a certain respect.

We talked. Sometimes we would reminisce about our school days. I recounted some of my prepared anecdotes, and Holmes would speak of cases, not the cases that he shared with Doctor Watson, however, only the ones that he solved prior to their meeting or in the doctor’s absence. Indeed, after my arrival, it was a week before Doctor Watson’s name was mentioned at all.

I was returning from a walk with Rasher when Holmes met me at the door to my sleeping chamber. He begged my forgiveness and said that he would not be joining me for dinner as he was in the middle of something that he dared not leave for long. I assured him I was not offended, and he rushed off, his silken dressing gown fluttering behind him.

After dinner, I rapped softly at the library door.

“Holmes?”

“Yes, yes, come in, Trevor.”

He was striding back and forth before the fire, looking more fit than I’d seen him yet. After a few moments, he unburdened himself.

“What do you think of sentience, my dear Trevor? Specifically, the sentience of vegetable things?”

I told him quite plainly that I did not understand what he meant by the phrase.

“These walls, these stones, the tarn and trees without, the very ether,” he waved his hands excitedly, “might they not have the capacity to act upon other sentient beings, say, you or I—”

I was about to object but thought better of it.

“—but—”

Holmes abruptly halted and turned in my direction.

“—might, if the code of their sentience was deciphered, might their acts be reversed? The key, Trevor, I may just have the key. Finally! Just like the dancing men! Just like the dancing men!”

He began to sing and move like bobbing crane and Rasher, having never observed a dance he didn’t want to join, hurried over to add his part. By the time Holmes caught his wheezing breath, it was difficult to say which was leading and which was following but they made a joyous pair. I clapped and whooped and urged them on.

Finally, Holmes had reached his limit.

“Oh, let’s have a glass to celebrate,” he said. “There’s an old bottle of Montrachet somewhere about here.”

And as the wine flowed so did the stories. Holmes recounted intriguing details of many cases, all of which included Doctor Watson. There were a few romantic anecdotes and even a bawdy yarn or two. I had no doubt of the depth of Holmes’s feeling for his partner of so many years, and, indeed, by the end of the evening, I was half in love with Doctor Watson myself.

“Oh, Holmes,” I said, right before I took my leave of him. “May I see Doctor Watson? Even if he isn’t aware of my presence, I should like to speak to him. I shan’t disturb him. I’d just like to tell him, in my own words, with my own voice, that I’m here and that I’m looking after you.”

“He knows and is grateful.” Holmes stroked his chin thoughtfully. “If Watson passes a good night, and it is my sincerest hope he will, then I shall bring you to him in the morning”

“Wonderful. Thank you, Holmes.”

He nodded and turned away muttering, “Good night, good night, Godspeed, good night…”

Oddly enough, I doubted even then, when I did not know what was to come, that he was speaking to me.


	3. Chapter 3

In the morning, I was dealt the most terrific of blows.

“Watson,” announced Holmes, “is no more.”

Rasher whined pitifully; the poor little beast seemed to sink into himself at the news, but I lashed out in irrational protest.

“But, Holmes, last night you said that…!”

“I thought I had discovered a treatment that would reverse or at least stall Watson’s decline, but alas, it was too little, too late.”

“Ah, so that’s what you’ve been doing with those experiments!”

He nodded his head slowly. “I am sorry, my dear Trevor.”

“It is I who must offer my condolences to you, Holmes. Words cannot express my sympathy and my sorrow.”

“Thank you. I have dreaded this day for quite some time, but now that it arrives I find myself without strong feeling, without feeling at all, in truth.”

“It is normal. Your grief began long ago and will have its seasons still.”

Holmes wiped his own face with a skeletal hand, then said wearily, “I must bid Mrs. Hudson’s assistance at once. I wish to preserve Watson’s body for a fortnight in one of the vaults. The nature of his affliction and the distance and exposure of the nearest burial ground as well as other formalities make it the most advisable course.”

This decision seemed to me, quite frankly, bizarre, but I had no wish to burden my friend with anything less than my whole-hearted support. Desiring, too, to spare the old dear any extra labour, I eagerly offered my services in place of hers.

Holmes readily accepted, saying that with my aide it would be much easier to bear the coffin to its interim rest.

The hour was relatively early, and I was surprised to discover the body already encoffined. I joined Holmes and forthwith we set about the task. Rasher, never to be left out, accompanied us but, perhaps sensing the mournful circumstances, maintained a reverend distance. He was trotted behind us, then hesitated at the top of the steps leading down to the subterranean floor. As we reached level ground, however, I heard a sad whine and then the tell-tale clicking of paws on the stone. Despite his subdued mood, I did not dare bring him into the vault but rather left him sitting in the corridor just outside the door.

There were no windows in the chamber and only one door. Once inside, my nose twitched at the faint excrescent odor of the tarn, which must have been pressing upon an exterior wall. I felt uneasy, and my disquietude only intensified when Holmes announced he wanted to open the coffin.

“Do you wish me to leave?” I asked.

“Oh, no. Please stay.”

Disappointed, I remained.

And it was then that I finally met Doctor Watson.

I was, in a word, astonished.

He showed not one sign of malady! Were it not for the coffin itself, I might have thought him merely asleep! His cheeks, indeed, his whole face bore natural colour—no pallor, pox or any other ravage of illness—and his physique appeared well-fed and well-muscled. His moustache was thick, the hair on his head, too, though they were the ashen grey to which certain light-haired gentlemen succumb in later years. His lips were even curled in a faint smile, as if he was quite pleased with the joke he’d just delivered.

All in all, he looked, well, quite alive.

A dark object tucked beside the body caught my eye.

“His favourite pipe, a cherrywood I gave him the first Christmas we shared,” explained Holmes. “A pagan touch, I know, but…”

Just then, the hushed atmosphere of the tomb was broken by a sudden and, I must add, wholly unprecedented display of ridiculousness from Rasher. With a woofing fanfare, he galloped into the chamber and sprang just before the coffin. I turned sideways and caught him in my arms just in time, that is, just before he landed directly atop the corpse. The impact of him, however, caused my body to droop, and he had a good, long sniff about the body before I hurried towards the door, mumbling intermittently curses, directed at my foolish pup and contrite apologies directed at my friend.

“I’ll meet you in the library, Holmes,” I said, belatedly realising that my beloved beast had given me the perfect excuse for egress.

Holmes made no reply, but I heard the bang of coffin nails as I reached the foot of the stairs.

* * *

As to be expected, Holmes sank into a profound depression after the death of Doctor Watson. I saw those heather grey irises no more, only deep dark sockets which betray not a fleck of light. His pale skin became positive translucent. His appetite vanished as did his interest in books, though he would occasionally take up his violin and pluck the strings in absentminded fashion.

I left him to his melancholy for a day or two. He was often in a contemplative state, his head tilted to one angle as if he were listening to some far-off sound. Then, I tried to engage him in conversation. Sometimes he responded. Sometimes I was uncertain if he even heard. He retreated into himself, like a turtle or a snail, in a manner that was almost complete.

“Has Doctor Watson any family that we should notify?”

The second time I posed the question Holmes said ruefully,

“No, no, do you not remember? I am the last of the Holmes.”

I contemplated putting my visit to an end, then and there, for all the good I was doing Holmes, but to abandon him in such a state seemed cruelty in the extreme. I thought of seizing him by violence and forcibly removing him somewhere, anywhere, pumping him full of food and fresh air against his will until he resuscitated.

It is with hindsight that I see any course save the one I chose might have been preferable.

I am ashamed to confess that instead of my companionship buoying Holmes’s spirits, the inverse transpired; that is, Holmes’s dark mood began to infect me. In about four days, I, too, had lost interest in books and correspondence. I was even eschewing afternoon tea. Only my devotion to Rasher, blessed, blessed Rasher, saved me from descent into a torpor as abject as my host’s. Rasher and I took regular walks. He also had, of course, his brief sojourns in the garden adjacent my room. And there were his meals. His was the only appetite in the household that did not seem to disintegrate in the wake of Doctor Watson’s death.

It was the seventh day after Holmes and I had placed Doctor Watson’s coffin in the vault that I got a shock. Mrs. Turner announced, to me, but not to Holmes, I think, that she was going to pass the evening in the village with her family as a peculiar ache in her joints told her that a fierce storm was in the offing.

At mid-day, she left us, and I took charge of assembling the evening meal. The larder was stocked as if for a long siege, but I was alarmed to find all my correspondence, the letters I’d entrusted to the old dear for posting, neatly tied in a bundle in a corner of the kitchen. I don’t know what shook me more: the subterfuge or the fact that the household appeared to have no contact with the outside world since my arrival. I decided at once to keep the matter to myself, not wishing to alarm Holmes any further but also, frankly, doubting whether such a circumstance would even register in the poor soul’s conscience.

In the evening, Holmes took a bit of soup and a crust of bread, and I the same.

While Rasher made noisy work of the contents of his bowl, I listened to the wind without.

After tidying up, I joined Holmes in the library. For once, Rasher had remained with the master of the house, and I found him nervously snuffling at Holmes’s ankles.

The winds howled.

“Listen to it!” Holmes cried, springing to life, in a manner that startled myself and Rasher. “Listen to the symphony!”

And with that, he leapt from his armchair and rushed towards a curtain. He threw back the heavy material, revealing an enormous window, and hurled open the casement.

Gusts of unnatural ferocity swept into the room, creating a maelstrom of paper and light-weight oddities. A glass case of pinned butterflies toppled from its precarious perch and crashed into shards; the wind caught the liberated lepidoptera they swirled about like souls freed from purgatory.

I perceived a quicksilver lining of sorts to the miasma that billowed up from the tarn. It might have been beautiful, the dark charcoal clouds with their mercurial haloes, were it not for the stench, which overwhelmed my senses and the deranged behaviour of my friend.

Holmes cackled. “You see! You see, my dear Trevor!”

Thunder cracked, and it might have been an echo of the mad laughter in the room.

Rasher shrieked and burrowed himself beneath the sofa.

Holding my breath, I hurried to close the casement and, as calmly as I was able, usher Holmes back to his chair. He went quietly enough, but I felt his whole body vibrate like a suspended lute once-touched.

“This is no storm. It is a judgment, Trevor.”

“Holmes, that is superstition, and you are not a superstitious man.”

The noises he made were mirthless ones.

“Am I not?”

I frantically looked about for something to distract us, and my eyes alit on the line of index-books. I plucked the first in the series.

“Why don’t I remind you of the man you are? I’ll read one of your old cases. It will bring back good memories. The storm will pass, and we’ll be none the wiser of it.”

Holmes offered no protest, and I launched into the tale, which turned out, coincidentally, to be my own.

“ _’Trevor was the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one more as I went down to chapel_.’ There it is Rasher, your patrimonial fame.”

Rasher whined and poked his head out of his hiding place. Then he hurried to my feet, creating a space for himself by taking on the form and function of an ottoman stool.

“… _it would be a fastidious man who could not put in a pleasant month there_ …”

A pang of nostalgia gripped me that was only made stronger as I continued reading.

“ _’There had been a daughter, I heard, but she had died of diphtheria while on a visit to Birmingham_.’”

I did not realise that I’d stopped until I heard Holmes’s voice. I cursed myself for my myopia: in remembering my own sorrows, I’d forgot the original purpose of distracting Holmes from his.

“Oh, Trevor, you were my only friend in those days, and you are still my friend, or you would not be here, and I have wronged you so.”

His words were punctuated by a horrible sobbing noise, which emanated from the fireplace.

It must have been the wind, but it sounded so very human.

“No, Holmes, no,” I hastened to reassure him. “Calm yourself and listen. Here is the part where you are very clever. ‘ _Come, now, Mister Holmes,’ said he, laughing good-humouredly. ‘I’m an excellent subject, if you can deduce anything from me_.’”

Holmes began to shake his head.

“No, no, no,” he interjected. “Oh, how Watson’s words from your lips remind me of who I was, of what I was, and how they remind me that I have turned my back on it all! And for what? For what, my dear Trevor?’

Stubbornly, I pressed on with the tale, raising my voice as if to drown out Holmes and the storm.

But Holmes raised his voice, too, and got to his feet. He bellowed,

“WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT GHOSTS?! YOUR KIND, CHARITABLE, OL’ PAPA, WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT GHOSTS?!’

My temper snapped. Ignoring Rasher’s yelp, I threw down the book and stood, raising myself to my full, proud stature. I met Holmes’s gaze, not spare a single consideration for the heather grey rings on display.

“He said!” I shouted, with all the frustration of a man who has watched too many men wallow to death in their own miserable folly, ‘ _OF ALL GHOSTS THE GHOSTS OF OUR OLD LOVERS ARE THE WORST!_ ’”

As if I’d struck him, Holmes crumpled into this armchair and put his head in his hands.

“Trevor, I’ve not told the truth, to you, of all people, my oldest friend. Watson was an honest man, and I am a liar, unworthy of…”

Rasher toddled to Holmes’s side and began to lick his fingers.

I looked on the tableau in benevolent fury—like a father or a father-confessor, or, hell, like my father. Then I opened my mouth and from whence the wisdom and insight came, I have neither knowledge nor supposition. I can only say it was there, in my thoughts, to be spoken in that moment but not in the moments prior.

“When did Watson die, Holmes?”

“Two days after he posted your letter.”

“What did you do?”

“I preserved him as best I knew how with an eye to reanimating him whenever I found the method to do so…”

“And a week ago?”

“I thought I had found it, the complete chain of steps from death to life! But, no. The process was a failure, indeed, far worse than failure for it only succeeded in unraveling the cocoon of suspension I’d woven about Watson. He died again. I loved him so, Trevor! I just couldn’t bear to be without him! And I killed him! By bringing him to this horrid place, I murdered him as swiftly and as surely as if I’d put a bullet in his heart! I pledged my soul to any deity or demon that would bring him back to my beloved, beloved,” he began to sob, or maybe it was the wind in the chimney, “back to me.”

There was a sudden hush, in Holmes and in the wind, and I heard a door open somewhere. Then I heard another noise.

“What is that, Holmes?”

He lifted his head, then turned his face toward the darkest corner of the room.

“It sounds like footsteps.”

“Mrs. Turner?”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Hudson?”

“No, too heavy.” The noise grew louder. “It sounds,” he huffed, “it sounds like Watson’s boots.”

_BANG!_

The casement flew open, and like an invading army, all terrors of the storm breeched our sanctuary once again.

I breathed in the grotesque fragrance and tried valiantly not to gag. I watched the whirlwind arabesques of paper and debris, and Rasher’s spirited pursuit of a bat, which had blown in with the storm.

But above the cacophony and through the chaos, I heard Holmes’s cry.

“Watson? Is that you?”

Holmes rose and moved slowly, as if in mesmeric sleep, towards the dark corner.

Judging the futility of bringing Rasher under control, I flew to Holmes’s side.

He spoke in a quick manic clip.

“What if my efforts weren’t for naught, Trevor. What if the reanimation was delayed, but not denied? What if, what if…” He clenched my forearm so hard that later, much later, I would see the imprint of his claws upon my skin. “…WHAT IF WE HAVE PUT HIM LIVING IN THE TOMB? He is there, Trevor. I say I know it is him. He is there. He is—”               

A bloody fist drew back the curtain from the other side.

And then I was face-to-face with the man I’d seen in coffin.

His suit, the one in which he’d been laid to rest, was covered in blood. One hand clenched at the curtain, the other held, I noted with horror, held the cherrywood pipe. The marks of a hellish struggle were all about him, torn clothing, scratches about the face and neck.

His mouth opened, and the blackest bile bubbled out—along with the vilest reproof in a ghastly voice that resembled nothing human so much as the drag of raw flesh over gravel.

“Did you not hear the rending of the coffin, Holmes? Did you not hear the grate of the hinges of my prison? Did you not hear me struggle within the vault? Why such haste, Holmes, to put me out of side and underground? Did you forget your own jest, ‘who wants a doctor who can’t tell if a man’s dead or not?’” This was followed by laughter of a truly diabolical nature, then the hoot of an owl. “Who, Holmes? Who, who, who?”

I shrank back in abject terror, but Holmes did not.

“Watson?” he asked feebly.

But then Doctor Watson was upon Holmes, dragging him to the floor.

I saw the bloody hands, which were not stumps, but rather bundles of thin bony branches, twine ‘round Holmes’s neck.

His eyes bulged. His tongue protruded. He gurgled like a half-clogged drain.

I was about to throw myself upon the fray, stench and ghosts and blood be damned, when I heard what I thought could only be a hell-hound’s howl.

But I turned my head just in time to see Rasher bounding off the back of the sofa.

“NO!” I cried much too late.

Rasher flew through the cyclone of parchment, pamphlets and palimpsests, and crashed solidly onto Holmes.

The ground beneath my feet lurched.

I fell.

Confused, I glanced towards the open window.

The tarn was oozing into the room!

It reeked. It covered everything in its path.

I didn’t understand.

The strip of landscape framed by the window—it was much like that study in charcoal I’d first seen, dark grey storm clouds, thick silver-outlined fog, and supplicant limbs—appeared to be rising like a stage curtain.

But then I realised it wasn’t the sky that was lifting—but the house that was sinking!

“Holmes!”

But Holmes was dead.

His eyes almost hung out of the sockets. His tongue lolled.

Then I saw the gash across his throat and trickle of dark red flowing towards me.

Rasher was sniffling and licking and nuzzling about his face in a widow’s frenzy.

Doctor Watson was nowhere to be seen.

The world lurched once more.

The sky curtain was rising, rising, rising…

There was nothing for it.

“RASHER!”

He froze, a smudge of blood on his white-pink muzzle.

“RUN!”

We fled.

I have never run so fast or so blindly.

The storm was still raging when Rasher and I found ourselves outside, but we didn’t slow our pace.

As we raced across the causeway, I noted the slope increasing. By the end of it, we were climbing a precipice.

But we made it. And we didn’t stop until we were on high ground.

When I could go no further, I threw myself to earth. Rasher crawled into my lap.

“Good boy, good boy, good boy,” I panted and held him close.

But I wasn’t looking at him, I was watching the House of Holmes sink, brick and clay, into the tarn.

When the last of it was gone, Rasher whined, but I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes from the space that the monstrous house had minutes before occupied.

As a wet tongue swabbed my ear, I heard and felt something roll to the ground beside me.

Brought back to myself, I reached for it.

It was a cherrywood pipe, still warm.

The scent of strong tobacco tickled my nose, and I remembered the words I’d read a hundred times.

_I always smoke a ‘ship’s’ myself._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


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